Farsight Management is a villas and hotels management company. During COVID-19, a hotel X, which is working with us just on the bookings management & marketing agreement (not full property management), was closed for several months as it is located on the public beach, and the Bali government temporarily closed the beach until further notice. The manager of the hotel has requested us to close the hotel until May 10th.  Guests booked the room last-minute on May 12th for the check-in on May 14th and have paid in full. They have received necessary, welcome emails concerning their booking and confirmation from Farsight Management company, that the room is ready for them.  The hotel has received information about the new booking once the booking was confirmed by email. As it was a last-minute booking, Farsight Management’s staff decided to inform about the booking in a special whatsapp group to be sure that the hotel`s managers of the owner have received the information. Several hours later, we received negative messages from the guests via the booking system that the hotel refused to check them in and asked to cancel their reservation. The guests are very unsatisfied with the issue as they don’t have any other place to stay. One guest also had a high number of followers in her social media and is an international influencer. She has made several posts and stories about the situation, tagging the hotel and blame for unprofessionalism.
The owner of the hotel read it and starts to put the blame on Farsight, claiming that the hotel was not ready for the guest, and Farsight should not accept such booking at the first time. The owner also wrote that the beach is still closed till the end of May. The owner is furious and said that Farsight acted very unprofessional, accepting the booking and without any confirmation with the hotel’s management of the owner. Then owner`s managers of the hotel have sent several messages to the owner that they did not see any information from Farsight Management on May 12th, when the booking was made.  

The owner wrote to us:

“Guests sent me two links to my property, it shows different prices for the same date. Please comment!”.

The owner wrote to us:

“What is happening with the prices to my villa on Airbnb? Why is the last-minute rate for the villa $100? I asked for no less than $120.  Who set the prices for my villa? If guests will book with this price I don;t want to accept booking!!! Please comment!”

The owner wrote to us:

“Good morning. I saw a new booking in the calendar for one month a week ago. I want to know the status of the booking and if it was paid. If there is no deposit paid yet why then the dates are blocked by this booking?”

The part of conversation with the owner of the private villa:

Owner:

“I must say it’s getting crazy to have all those fees deducted. How can there be fee of about 90 USD only for card or transfers? This is totally crazy and I am not willing to pay for this!!!”

Customer Support manager:

“Dear Nickole,
This is a standard fee of аcquiring banks for their service.
Some guests are not in contact with us, and they can't make bank transfers, so if we don't process this payment and wait for payment on check-in, we can just lose the money if there is a "No-show".
Many OTAs now are pushing for Hotel Collect type of payment (with payment on check-in), so if we want to get more reservations, we have to allow this type of payments, and to secure this payment we have to charge guest credit cards using аcquiring bank service.”

Owner:

“Look I understand. But why do I have to pay for those costs completely? I don’t have anything to do with those payment terms and all costs always are paid fully by me which is not fair. The price for the villa is the price for the villa and for me to pay 90 USD for the client to do a payment I will not accept.”

The owner wrote to us:

The booking was canceled today but I still see that the dates are not available through my link to the calendar. Why were the dates in the calendar not opened after the booking was canceled ??? I still might get last-minute booking.